Free Sterling Squadron by Eric Nylund Page B

rippled.
    Ethan recoiled.
    It was one of those flat caterpillar things. It was alive. It squirmed as he took it.
    One had been slapped on him when his leg had been punctured. The thing cleaned and repaired the wound, but it was gross.
    “These have cartilage protein binders to fix that nick,” Felix told him. He laced his thick fingers together to demonstrate.
    Ethan nodded and smoothed the bandage over the wing. The caterpillar stuck with a wet smacking noise and wiggled into place.
    The wasp shifted, annoyed at the creature’s presence.
    “I know exactly how you feel,” he said to his wasp.
    Ethan glanced up and saw Madison inspecting her dragonfly. Her bodysuit rippled with the same camouflage greens of the insect. She lovingly ran her hands over its shell and patted it as if it were a pet. She had an entirely different relationship with her I.C.E. suit.
    Madison … Ethan honestly didn’t know what to think about her. She’d filed that failing flight assessment to Colonel Winter, but then she’d added those mitigating remarks. And then she’d had their suits fueled, charged, and loaded with field supplies. She
must
have believed in Ethan.
    He owed her.
    Madison looked up, flipped her hair out of her face (the gelled spikes had lost their stiffness on the flight out here), and glared at Ethan as if she could feel him thinking about her.
    Ethan’s face burned and he turned away.
    Meanwhile, Felix directed the giant luna moth assault carrier, one hand on its thorax, so it sat between the other I.C.E. suits and the mouth of the overhang. The moth’s stealth surfaces would deflect any signals from those firefly patrols.
    Felix turned to them. “Okay, let’s figure out our plan.”
    “You’re not in charge of this mission,
Corporal
,” Paul said. He cocked his head and seemed to be waiting for Felix to step aside.
    “Sorry, Paul,” Felix told him, “I
am
in charge. Technically you’re not a staff sergeant. Escaped prisoners have no rank.”
    Paul shut up. He crossed his arms and fumed.
    “Besides,” Felix whispered, “there’s something going on with you and this mission. I hear it in your voice. Am I wrong?”
    Paul shuffled his feet. “It’s just this place. It gives me … nightmares.”
    Felix waited for more explanation from Paul. None came.
    Madison grabbed a backpack from her dragonfly’s cockpit. “You two should stop arguing about who’s going to lead,” she said. “We should just get going!”
    “We’re not going anywhere without a plan,” Felix said, his tone turning frosty. “And not without establishing a chain of command.”
    Madison rummaged in her pack and pulled out four baseball caps.
    “Yeah,” she said with a snort, “we need a chain of command for a mission that’s illegal and probably the last thing we do before we all get court-martialed.”
    She tossed Ethan a cap.
    “What are these for?” he asked.
    “Your head, stupid.” Paul tugged one on.
    “They’re disguises,” Felix told him. “The Ch’zar have seen us—especially you, Ethan. Every adult on the planet will recognize you because of their collective hive mind.” He pointed to his iron-gray eyes. “They seem to know our eyes more than any other feature.”
    Ethan thought about
every
Ch’zar-controlled human adult on Earth knowing what he looked like and decided to
not
think about it.
    Too creepy.
    He turned the cap around. There was an embroidered red
R
on its crown.
    “We stole them from a neighborhood baseball team called the Rebels.” Madison smiled crookedly. “Rebels? Resisters? Get it? Just like us. I’d love to flaunt it in front of the Ch’zar.”
    Ethan smiled back, but he wasn’t looking at the cap. He stared at the Resister pilot’s wings on Madison’s bodysuit.
    He wished for the millionth time that he had a set of those. The insignia had crossed insect wings with a bundle of arrows underneath, all surrounded by a semicircle of gold stars. Only those who graduated from flight